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Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

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Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly racist and classist for these privileged plutocrats to mimic the dialects of the underprivileged. The ironic and overplayed way in which they take on the pose also makes it clear that they intend it as a publicity stunt--not as genuine respect for the culture or because they fit into the culture or want to fit in. They just want money and they think this is a money making stunt. It's one of the cleare…

Is it genuine rage or sarcasm? It seems to be genuine but I just can't believe that.

I don't find any of his points to be too far off. If they were a bit more modest and down-dressed I might think they had a genuine respect for hip-hop.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#112
post #7

Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.

The funny thing about this whole controversy is that they're getting more organic links to rapgenius. When the penalty is taken care of - they may be sitting in a better position than they were previously.

I don't think organic links matter much at this point when you can't even Google their name and find them on the front page.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#113
post #102
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because the sheer magnitude is crazy. Rap Genius's traffic fell by nearly two thirds ! This is a very prominent, YC-affiliated startup that is being nuked by Google. It should come as no surprise that the news is seen as significant by the HN crowd. Moreover, I think many people are upset with the scope of Google's punishment. De-weighting RG is one thing, nuking it into the ground is entirely different, and is…

Penalties are blunt instruments. The whole point of this penalty is that Google cannot trust the signals that are in its index when it comes to Rap Genius's site. And it sure isn't Google's fault that they can't. Can Google subtract out all the "naughty stuff" and decide if Rap Genius deserves to even be on the front page for "rap genius" anymore? I doubt it. If Google's search had a category for "obvious searches" t…

From I what I heard the penalty is only for a month long? Still, what other practices has Rap Genius been using all this time, without being caught, in order to gain so much traffic?

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#114
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low barrier?! Giant companies like Yahoo, staffed with large teams of search technology pioneers, have been scared out of search competition. Google touts its massive custom infrastructure. The arms race between Google and SEO creates a massive pollution backwash of false quality signals on the web, that make things way harder for any upstart which lacks Google's decade-plus of proprietary know-how and billions in ha…

while DDG started by 1 guy and entrants like blekko or qwiki can differentiate in other ways and enter and compete easily. Again everything you are saying is because of superior product/employees and innovation. Your entire argument is based off no one else can come up with a better product so lets punish them

Where'd I say "let's punish them"? I'm just accurately labeling the situation.

Google's dominant position constitutes a 'monopoly' and 'monopoly market power', in a common understanding of those words, and in the senses often used by economists and regulators. Their search market has very high 'barriers to entry', in terms of costs-to-compete, ability-to-reach-customers, returns-to-scale, and network-effects. (Separate from all the specific things I mentioned which make it extremely hard for entrants to get a foothold, you can also just look at the profits. Whenever there are big profits, there are business 'moats', or else someone else would grab a bunch of those profits themselves.)

This makes them a likely target of government antitrust action – an observation which is true whether or not such antitrust laws, and related enforcement actions, are a good idea or not. Again, I'm interested in accurately describing what exists, not making moral or policy judgements.

Qwiki? Really? They never offered ranked search, abandoned their 'visual explainer' product long ago, and are now part of Yahoo with their multimedia storytelling app.

DDG, Blekko, and all search sites other than Google/Bing/Yahoo/Aol/Ask are together less than 0.3%-1% of the US market. And yet this market is wildly profitable for Google – and almost no one else. (Bing, the distant 2nd-place, has lost hundreds of millions every quarter since 2007.) That's not an indication of vibrant easy-entry competition: one company dominates market-share and profits, and the number of competitors and new entrants have been declining over time.

By the way, the founder of your 'compete easily' example Blekko also disagrees with your assessment, and has since the outset of Blekko. In this 2007 post he describes how it's impossible to compete for market share head-on with Google due to its "immense and amazing power" in a "winner-take-all market":

http://www.skrenta.com/2007/01/winnertakeall_google_and_the_...

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#115
post #7

Can someone explain why this is a topic worthy of discussion? I get that they had a SEO tactic, Google penalized them, they offered an empty apology for it, and now we're up to the present. Stating the obvious of "traffic drops when Google penalizes you" seems like a "sun rose again today"-type story.

The funny thing about this whole controversy is that they're getting more organic links to rapgenius. When the penalty is taken care of - they may be sitting in a better position than they were previously.

If you're right, and were this actually intentional too, well, that would be genius.

But given that their traffic is maybe off two-thirds now and that it is unknown how long google will leave the lights on (weeks, maybe months), during which time this will be long-flushed out of the news cycle and it becomes harder and harder to recover, and harder to secure things like more capital when you look this stupid, that's a high-risk bet. I'd say sabotage is more likely.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#116
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A monopoly (from Greek monos μόνος (alone or single) + polein πωλεῖν (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods. The verb "monopolize" refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude c…

Google is not the only supplier to internet searches and is not excluding competitors. They are merely very popular and are thus not a monopoly.

You are interpreting "monopoly" literally. In the context of antitrust law, you only need to have a big enough market share to appear on regulators' radars. The actual market share threshold varies from country to country, but typically it's around 60%. Google certainly meets that criteria in many countries, not only for search but for online video as well.

As for "excluding competitors", Google is having a tough time with antitrust regulators in the EU for exactly that. For a more obvious example, see their shenanigans with YouTube and Windows Phone.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#117
post #109
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you explain why you care if other people discuss a topic you don't think is "worthy" of discussion? I thought there might be a piece to this story that I was missing. I gained a lot of value from the replies to my question (esp. the conversation spawned from @snowwrestler's comment.) >You know you can ignore the story and look at the entire rest of the front page, right? You didn't really need this in your comme…

> It was a bit of snark that devalued your otherwise justified response. No it wasn't. Comments like yours are peppered throughout HN and Reddit, and the answer is always the same: the users found it interesting. It's a democratic voting system -- get over it.

How do you know it's a democratic voting system? Just because you assume it is, doesn't mean it is. Just ask around, plenty of stories about being mysteriously shunted off the front page.

RapGenius is a YC company and always seems to get attention on HN whenever there is some kind of perceived grievance against the company. Whether it's Google or Heroku, there's always a lot of screaming and shouting.

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#118
post #99
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no, in this case it's directly measured. Quantcast only shows exact stats for sites that include their JS tracker. Sites normally do this for advertising purposes (advertisers don't have to wonder about your traffic).

When I worked at reddit, the shakedown worked something like this: 1. ComScore (or one of their competitors) makes up a small number and tells advertisers that's your traffic 2. Advertisers believe them 3. You call up ComScore and say, "WTF?" 4. ComScore says, "Well, if you don't like the numbers we're reporting, you can just add our tracking bug to your site" And then you're in a position where you either have to be…

That sounds scummy as hell. It also sounds like a problem that needs fixing!

Re: Rapgenius.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics

#120
post #19

Why is Rap Genius afforded this coverage? There are a lot of SEO scammers out there and are punished as found. Reading through one of those TC articles it appears that they were interviewed on stage by TC during one of their events too. Why is a scammy link baity company given this importance?

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